This where my head is
I feel resentment from every direction
Even some homies be wearing expressions
I be discouraged from sharing my blessings
We used to share a connection
Now it just feels like it's wearing and stretching
I'm getting real sick of taking advice
From people that never could stare at reflections
- Jack Harlow, “WHATS POPPIN”

BARS, man. It’s all about the bars.

For the uninitiated, most rap songs are written in a 4/4 time signature, meaning 4 beats per bar for 4 bars (hence 4/4) equaling 16 beats per verse.

Rappers’ one-liners are referred to as bars and four bars equal a verse. If you truly got bars, you got a unique flow with different cadences to keep the listener guessing, great lyrics, a distinct voice, and you’re an original. Most rappers claim they got bars, just like most rappers claim they’re one of the best. But most rappers are full of shit.

Jack Harlow’s got bars. I have not been this excited about a rapper’s potential since I heard Kendrick Lamar’s Section.80 in 2011 or Joey Bada$$’ 1999 in 2012. (For the record, I still think “F*ck Your Ethnicity” by Kendrick and “Righteous Minds” by Joey from those respective albums are some of the best tracks they’ve ever written).

Harlow is a 22 year-old rapper from Louisville, Kentucky. He’s made five mixtapes in the past four years and has yet to release a “major label album debut,” an album with an overall theme and story that announces to the rap world, “I’m here.” No one has done this better in the past decade than Kendrick’s major album debut, good kid m.A.D.d City.

Harlow’s still honing his craft, getting better as the mixtapes gather. He’s gained notoriety for his killer single, “WHATS POPPIN,” and his video for the track was directed by the now-renowned Cole Bennett, which Bennett featured on his Youtube channel, Lyrical Lemonade. The track also got onto Spotify’s rap playlist RapCaviar, blowing it up to the likes of 164 million streams. He’s officially on the map.

“WHATS POPPIN’” was the first track I heard by Harlow. But anyone can be a one hit wonder. Then I heard “Sundown.” With my jaw dropped, my ears got very excited.

Since then, I’ve listened to everything he’s released many times. This week’s mixtape is solely dedicated to him. He’s a rare artist who creates a sound that emits euphoria through my brainwaves.

Harlow hits me differently than most rappers. He has a fluid flow that sounds like he’s speeding through lanes in total control. Read this chorus and his segway into the first verse and try to imagine how this would sound in a rap song:

I'm off a tab of that synthetic
Sundown, forty-five minutes 'til this shit set in
Checking for the kid, I had to chin check him
Big mood, & we teach 'em big lessons over here
2-4 coming heavy like we bench pressing
And I'm gon' deliver every time just like a sent message
In the south and I'm feeling like a pimp
You a simp, I don't feel bad for you, I ain't sympathetic

I just hit the peak, got the kids sweatin'
Out of town chick, tryin' tell her what a Big Red is
I'm a Kentucky boy 'til the death
Go and get it through your head until it's motherfuckin' embedded

The lyrics are nothing special, but it’s what Harlow creates with those words. He’s turning sugar into Kool-Aid. Now listen to him rap these lines on “Sundown.” It' just comes out different.

His lyrics can sometimes be childish and sexist, par the course for a guy his age, but he’s a poet at heart. Take the second verse of the introspective “Eastern Parkway”:

Young and poppin', I been soakin’ up my adolescence
I took some time to find the balance, now we back in session
Ain't goin' to college, I decided that's a bad investment
But I'm still takin' notes and siftin' through my past and present
I been having trouble socializing
Go out to these parties to meet people like me, nah I really don't feel like it
Can't relate to no one, I should stay home they'll miss me
I told this shit to Copelan on the way home from Cincy
He agreed with me, felt the same
Damn, that shit's relieving
Maybe time to reassess my standards for an evening
Shit ain't perfect, we just searching for a plan or just a reason to
Fall in love with life and be a fan of fuckin' breathing
I ain't suicidal, but lately nothin' seems to interest me
And I ain't got the time if it don't gratify me instantly
Thought that I’d be smooth if I ain't smoke or drink
Still I got some vices that be stopping me from focusing
Like wassup with my dopamine, searching for a doper me
I don't want that Adderall, bitch, I ain't got no broken wings
I grew up with the poetry, at 12 I wrote a hot verse
Relying on a pill to do it only means I got worse

Listen to “RIVER ROAD,” the last track on this mixtape. The piano and slower rhythm sound the alarm that this is going to be an introspective song! It’s raw and honest. Here’s verse two:

I got
Well wishes in my cellphone from my classmates that let themselves go
Well aware that I'm well known
Know we had a stretch of time between us that you felt close to me,
but it's been a minute since
Did I change or did they rob me of my innocence?
Inner city kids I grew up with, we had some differences
But inside gymnasiums, it's almost like they didn't exist
Time's tickin', my mom's 50
Told me that she been thinkin' 'bout spending time different
It's more precious, What if I took the same method at 21 and adopted it?
Sometimes I feel like I'm tripping for dipping out of town while my pops living still
Palms itching, but this money is not Benadryl
Ain't no pattern to the way I tend to feel
It's all over the place
I'ma lower the shades and sleep in
I ran into a kid I grew up with
He shook my hand and told me, "No one thought you'd do this shit"
I can't relate, but see, I understand
'Cause when they hear me now compared to back then it's like, "Who is this?"
Don't know if I changed, but the music did
In my old shit, I used to just admit things
Now I sit around and wonder, "Is that something you admit?"
'Cause when I hear it, all I do is cringe
I guess I did change
Two years in ATL
Before I moved, I had never got drunk
Now I'm getting tore up like an ACL
Meeting people that my friends idolize
That they only ever get a chance to see on they TL
Artists that they playing through a JBL
In somebody's basement, smoking, getting wasted
Something in the air and I can taste it
2018 I couldn't be on my own
Every night I'd call a girl and fall asleep on the phone
I guess it was how I coped with leaving from home
Discipline, I gotta keep in control
It gets more difficult to rap every day
'Cause it's less and less things that feel like worth saying
Nothing is for sure except life sure ends
I tried to keep that in mind but it's not workin'

Harlow can switch it up and go smooth and catchy, like on “Smells Like Incense.” Harlow exhibits some braggadocio all the while admitting his earlier raps weren’t all that great:

She already chose, why you trippin'?
She ain't that significant
Used to have a gimmick
Glad I never went big wit it
Now I got the big wigs spinnin'
I got Titos on the rocks
With some cranberry mixed in with it
She got a one bed, one bath
And it smells like incense in it

I never imagined “I got Titos' on the rocks with some cranberry mixed it with it” could sound so good.

If you listened to him enough, you wouldn’t be surprised to hear that Harlow’s favorite rapper is Drake (who is a favorite of mine as well). Harlow is running the Drake playbook: he sings (check “Warsaw” and “SYLVIA”), shows vulnerability, raps clearly enough that you can understand every word, and isn’t pigeonholing himself into one sound. He’s a sonic shape shifter.

Need more proof of his abilities? Here he is on Funk Flex freestyling for three and a half minutes. Yes, these freestyles on Funk Flex or Sway or wherever are not exactly freestyles, rappers come into these with verses in mind, but still, this is impressive, and it’s on one take:

I can’t wait to see where this guy goes in the future. The potential is there, but there’s a hell of a lot more for him to do. Here’s hoping for more euphoria.

LATE 2021 UPDATE: So Jack blew up once the remix of “WHAT’S POPPIN’” came out, and now he’s everywhere. He released his major label debut, That’s What They All Say, which was wack AF. Just a terrible album with none of the bars, emotion, lyrics, etc. that he displayed on his earlier stuff. The skeptic in me says he pushed out an album very quickly to cash in on his sudden popularity, and that’s why it was garbage. The optimist in me says he’s still got it in him to make an album that blends together his unique abilities as he displayed on this playlist. Fingers crossed, Jack.